


On the Blood of Sacrifice

by Sisuei



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1433602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sisuei/pseuds/Sisuei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was tainted. Had been since the day her mother died to bring her into the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Blood of Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of headcanon for the character I like to play most often in the game.

For as long as she could remember she dreamt of fire. Long, licking tendrils of flame lashed across her body and her flesh bubbled and fat sizzled and crackled. She would wake with the heady stench of melted flesh and charred bones sitting thick at the back of her throat and she would wretch with the overwhelming stench of it all. Oftentimes, in her dreams, she was alone. There was a darkness pressing against her as if her eyes were closed, yet she could tell that it stretched beyond time itself and she would simply stand there, alone, in the dark. But eventually the fire found her. The fire always found her. It would start as a pinprick in the distance but she would glean no comfort from that light in the darkness for she knew what it would bring. It seemed as if she would stand there an age or more until her entire body was vibrating with tension, her heart pounding a frantic beat against her ribs and she would swear in those moments that fear had a smell because her senses burned with it. Then suddenly it would be upon her, no warning, no time-never any time-her feet always immovable on the ground as if made from stone, and the sound was a deafening roar as if the fire itself were some great and terrible beast, and it _consumed_ her.

  
When she had been very young she would often wake screaming and thrashing as if she were some wounded animal. In the beginning her kinsman scorned her for this. They swore at her, muttered under their breaths and shoved her rudely awake when it seemed she was falling into a fitful sleep, but eventually they grew to fear her. Unnatural, she heard them whisper. She was tainted. Had been since the day her mother died to bring her into the world.

  
Eventually she learned to keep quiet.

  
But the dreams never stopped, and always the fire would find her.

  
But if her nightmares were filled with hellfire then her waking world was always covered in ice.

  
She had been brought into the world during one of the fiercest storms her people had seen in centuries. The wind howled high and terrible, swirling great sheets of snow until there was nothing left that was not buried beneath it. For twenty-three days and twenty-three nights that wicked wind blew down from the mountains, screeching and howling through the valleys and across the great fields of ice until it seemed as if an entire army of fell beasts were prowling the land and still it was not enough to drown the cries of her mother.

  
She had been born inside the ice, and her mothers blood soaked the snow an unholy red. A fissure ran through the mountain, a rent in the cliffs, and there her kinsman sought shelter from the sudden storm, and when it was over three of them were dead and she had been born in their place. They were her sacrifices, Egla would tell her later, for all great and powerful things brought into the world must be brought forth on the blood of sacrifice.

  
She did not believe herself great or powerful, and anything brought into the world through sacrifice must be a cursed thing. She did not tell Egla this. She was afraid the old woman would not disagree.

And so she traversed the frozen northern wastes of her homeland, delved deep into its snow leaden forests, climbed its sheer mountains and wandered its barren valleys, yet no matter how far her feet took her the flames forever licked her heels.

  
Her name was Etain, and she was cursed.  



End file.
